‘Graffiti battle on streets of Belgrade’ as Serbia tries to stifle anti-Putin Russian exiles

Around 200,000 Russians have fled to Serbia, where they face threats and violence from the nationalist rightArmed with a brush and a bucket of grey paint, the Russian anti-war activist Ilya Zernov walked through Belgrade until he reached a large mural that said “Death to Ukraine” on the side of an apartment block.As Zernov, 19, started painting over the mural, he said he was cornered by three Serbian men who ordered him to stop. “One of them pulled out a knife … He then punched me in the right ear,” Zernov, who fled his hometown of Kazan shortly after Vladimir Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine, told the Observer.